Leonard Arthur - Career

Career

After attending Aldenham School in Elstree, Hertfordshire, Arthur received an MB and BCh at Cambridge University. He did National Service on the front line in Korea, as a medical officer in support of the Durham Light Infantry. Post-registration posts followed in Birmingham, London, Newcastle and Plymouth, and he obtained the MRCP in 1957. He worked as a senior paediatric registrar in Ibadan, Nigeria and then in Bristol. In 1965 he became a consultant paediatrician in Derby. He served on the Council of the British Paediatric Association, was secretary of the Paediatric Section of the Royal Society of Medicine and chaired the Trent Regional Advisory Sub-committee in Paediatrics, sitting also on the Regional Medical Committee. He also chaired a Derbyshire County Council Advisory Committee on children at risk of non-accidental injury. He was elected FRCP shortly before he died in 1983.

Dr Arthur was described by a colleague as a “a kind, gentle, compassionate man who cared deeply for his patients and their families. A great supporter of the weak or poor, he was motivated by firm Christian beliefs”. When he was suspended from work after his first court appearance, a petition with some 19,000 signatures, including three Derbyshire MPs, called for his reinstatement. A former patient wrote in 2001: “He was the very best doctor around. I know. I was one of his patients. And after all these years I still miss him.”

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